THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, August 9, 1996 TAG: 9608090052
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: JENNIFER DZIURA
LENGTH: 68 lines
THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER recently reported that membership in fraternal organizations such as the Lions, Elks, Moose, Masons and Shriners is withering like a petunia in a meat-packing plant.
Americans, it seems, are growing more and more reluctant to join clubs, community leagues, volunteer groups, bowling leagues or pretty much anything else that might involve contact with other people.
This, naturally, leads the average biped to conclude that Americans are spending more time alone. But what is it that we're doing with all this precious private time? Sitting around in old sweatclothes and dipping our Fritos into last night's chicken gravy?
In answering this question - which I have done independently and without the help of my local Girl Scout group or Moose Lodge - I have posted several theories. You may want to go someplace private before you begin to read them.
Firstly, we are watching more television. Once upon an idyllic time, when the Beatles were considered lascivious and television images were rendered in black and white, there were only a few channels, and these channels stopped broadcasting shortly after the streetlights came on.
Now tube-watchers have 24-hour access to stations devoted entirely to weather, home shopping, country music, exercise shows, gardening and U.S. Senate coverage. Especially sedentary viewers with home satellite dishes are able to digest their Fritos in front of 24-hour coverage of, for example, the shot put. Shot-putters, in turn, could probably find a channel offering 24-hour coverage of the digestion of Fritos.
Secondly, we are playing Solitaire. Or, at the very least, our Parcheesi boards are graying with dust whilst we battle our electronic chess sets. For example, you know your child isn't going to grow up to be a Shriner when he shuns perfectly healthy games of ``Duck, Duck, Goose'' in favor of sitting hunched over his ``Operation'' set muttering under his breath, ``The thighbone's connected to the hip bone. . . .''
Thirdly, we are Vulcan mind-melding with our computers. This, however, is not always so worthwhile and wholesome as any of a number of quixotic America Online commercials often suggest.
Man Number One in such a commercial might lament, ``I'm sorry, Man Number Two. I'd really like to go to the game, but I have to purchase a housing complex, find the lyrics to `Pleasant Valley Sunday,' hire an exterminator, coordinate a nuclear strike and research dinosaurs for my kid.''
Man Number Two would then point his techno-Cro-Magnon of a friend toward his computer, which, delightfully, is able to accomplish all of these tasks without even breaking a sweat.
Unfortunately, however, there now exist a number of human beings who misuse their computers by participating in, for example, an atrocity known as the MTV chat line, in which televised computer dialogues generally go something like this:
``Whoa, it's Madonna.''
``She's, like, pregnant.''
``Madonna . . . hey, I want to get with her.''
``Hey, can you play `Whip It' by Devo?''
``Did you know Madonna's pregnant?''
``HEY FRED! I'M ON MTV!!!''
Fourthly, we are busy being the Unabomber. Not everyone can be the Unabomber, of course, but just enough of us are trying to be the Unabomber that Montana looks like a really bad place to live, visit or receive mail from.
Jean-Paul Sartre summed it all up when he wrote, ``Hell is other people.'' Perhaps this is the consensus that America has come to as the Shriners dwindle in number and the rest of us retreat to our metaphoric caves. MEMO: Jennifer Dziura is a 1996 graduate of Cox High School. Her column
appears bimonthly. If you'd like to comment on her column, call INFOLINE
at 640-5555 and enter category 6778 or write to her at 4565 Virginia
Beach Blvd., Virginia Beach, Va. 23462. by CNB